The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Carmen Christopher wrote for and performed on The Chris Gethard Show , eventually hosting the first episode of "Chris Gethard Presents" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Christopher's other early credits included appearances on The Special Without Brett Davis, At Home with Amy Sedaris, High Maintenance, Alternatino with Arturo Castro, Shrill, Joe Pera Talks with You , and Search Party . He curren...

Millions of people recognize Scott Rogowsky as the original host of HQ Trivia, the daily live trivia app that became massively popular in 2017 before fizzling out in 2019. CNN looked back on that phase of Rogowsky's life in the 2023 documentary, Glitch: The Rise & Fall of HQ Trivia. But I first met Scott when he was barely out of college, one of the young upstarts in the downtown New York comedy s...

Tara Schuster was a 25-year-old working at Comedy Central who'd worked her way up from interning at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to curating Jokes dot com when she hit an emotional rock bottom. She then began learning how to reparent herself, which she turned into her first book, "Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies." She did that while rising to become a vice president of talent and development at...

Matt Knudsen is one of those character actors with a face you can't quite place, which is why the memoir he's writing is called, "Have I Seen You In Anything?" One of Knudsen's first big breaks in show business was playing Jesus Christ as a therapist to Bryan Cranston's character in Malcolm in the Middle . He has since been seen in episodes of Boston Legal, Big Love, Men of a Certain Age, Key & Pe...

Marcella Arguello is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor originally from Modesto, Calif., who has made a name for herself in the Los Angeles comedy scene by standing tall and true to herself. Her regular show, "Women Crush," started as a weekly showcase at NerdMelt, and is now monthly at the Hollywood Improv. Arguello has performed stand-up on HBO's 2 Dope Queens , Night Train with Wyatt Cenac ,...

Comedian and storyteller Gabe Mollica's one-person show, "Solo," begins with the declaration that upon turning 30, he realized he had no friends. Wait. Was that true? Is it still true today? After taking his show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, as well as Winnipeg, Dublin and Dallas, Mollica's show has settled in for a second limited-engagement run at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City....

It's the end of 2022, which means it's time once again for my annual year-end check-in with Jason Zinoman, critic at-large for The New York Times . Jason and I talk about the top trends we saw in comedy this year, the best up-and-comers in stand-up, the craziest ways comedy intersected with politics. And after all that, could we determine a Most Valuable Performer for the year? It's our Comedy MVP...

Mike Bridenstine is based in Los Angeles, was raised in Iowa, but it was his time in between in Chicago that helped form him and his friendships as a comedian. Bridenstine has written a book about the rise of the alt-comedy scene in Chicago in the early 2000s, which included his role in starting up a stand-up and video collective called Blerds — among them: Kumail Nanjiani, Kyle Kinane, T.J. Mille...

Kenice Mobley is a comedian from North Carolina, now based in Brooklyn, NY, whose star has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic. Mobley landed on Vulture's Comedians You Should and WiIll Know list in 2021, made her late-night debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon , and performed at the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in 2022 as part of the "Introducing…" showcase. She also launche...

Billy Wayne Davis is a comedian who has performed on Conan, Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central, lent his voice and producing skills to  SquidBillies , hosted a travel doc for CMT, Morgan Spurlock Presents Freedom! The Movie , opened for Sturgill Simpson, and worked with Sacha Baron Cohen on both Who is America?  and  Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Davis has just released his second stand-up comed...

Jeff Dunham is undoubtedly the most successful ventriloquist comedian of our lifetime. The 60-year-old from Dallas made his first appearance on  The Tonight Show  back in 1990, competed in disguise as "Pi-Rat" this fall on  The Masked Singer , and in between, he has released 10 comedy specials. Six on Comedy Central starting in 2006, followed by a primetime NBC special, two Netflix specials, then...

Kurt Braunohler started performing comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City in 1998, and took an experimental filmmaking improv group to the Edinburgh Fringe long before meeting Kristen Schaal — with whom Kurt would start a variety show called Hot Tub, win awards and kudos at festivals from Aspen to Australia, and eventually begin his own solo career as a stand-up comedian and actor...

Frankie Quiñones is a stand-up comedian and actor best known for his character work. Frankie stars as Luis on the Hulu series, This Fool , which was just picked up for a second season. He also co-starred in a web series that got bought by TBS, The Dress Up Gang , put out his own stand-up and sketch special on HBO Max, Superhomies , has begun recurring as cousin Miguel on the FX on Hulu comedy, Wha...

Born in China, Jioaying Summers first came to America for college in Kentucky speaking no English, then went to Hollywood looking for stardom. Summers has found it so far already on TikTok, where she has gained more than 1.2 million followers, and has created her own stage, The Hollywood Comedy, where she and other aspiring comedians can develop their voices. Since the pandemic, Summers has releas...

Mike Farah was the first producer hired at Funny or Die, and he has been a vital part of the upstart digital production studio since 2008, when Funny or Die was still known only as an online comedy video platform. The company has produced the critically-acclaimed Brockmire for IFC, Emmy-nominated Billy on the Street , the Peabody award-winning American Vandal for Netflix, the Emmy-nominated Sarah...

Tenacious D. Flight of the Conchords. The Lonely Island. We have plenty of examples of goofy guys getting together and making mirthy music. Where do the Wolves of Glendale fit in? Eric Jackowitz and Ethan Edenburg both came out of South Florida rock bands, and after performing for the Todd Glass podcast, formed a comedy band called The Cooties who were New Faces at Montreal's Just For Laughs in 20...

Subhah Agarwal is a bicoastal writer and stand-up comedian who grew up outside of Chicago, where she first started hitting open mics while still in high school. Subhah has written for Comedy Knockout on TruTV, The Jim Jefferies Show on Comedy Central, and Arsenio Hall's live 2022 talk show for Netflix. She made her late-night TV debut telling jokes on NBC's A Little Late with Lilly Singh , and act...

Yvonne Orji first came to our attention as Molly, Issa's best friend on Issa Rae's HBO series, Insecure . The Nigerian-born actress and comedian hasn't let the end of Insecure keep her down, though. Since the series wrapped at the end of 2021, Orji has put out her first book, "Bamboozled by Jesus," hosted the Yearly Departed comedy special for Amazon Prime Video, hosted the International Emmy Awar...

Forty years after his first screen credit as Modell in the Barry Levinson film, Diner , Paul Reiser is enjoying a career renaissance, co-starring in the biggest series on both Netflix and Amazon in Stranger Things and The Boys . Now in his 60s, Reiser has returned to his first love, stand-up comedy, embarking on a nationwide tour in the fall of 2022. Reiser sat down with me to talk about stand-up...

Liz Miele started doing stand-up at 16, got profiled by The New Yorker at 18, and earned her first TV credit on Comedy Central by 22. Miele has produced and starred in multiple web series, and written a book, " Why Cats Are Assholes " which came out in 2021. She has released four comedy albums, and the video versions of two of them have racked up millions of views apiece on YouTube. In September 2...

Jinkx Monsoon is a comedian and singer best known for becoming the first performer to win two seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race , first in season 5 in 2013, followed by the all-winner all-star edition in 2022, where she was crowned "Queen of All Queens." She began touring annually over the holidays in 2018 with fellow Drag Race star BenDeLaCreme, and you can watch The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special on H...

Michelle Ortiz was born in Los Angeles but studied all over the world, including the Moscow Art Theatre School, and classical opera in Germany. A participant in both the ABC and CBS diversity showcases, Ortiz broke through first as a cast member on the reboot of MADtv for The CW — where she impersonated the likes of Kim Kardashian, Melania Trump, Sofia Vergara, Jennifer Lopez, and Dora the Explore...

Alice Fraser first studied law in Sydney, Australia, but found comedy and the Footlights while getting her Master's degree in rhetoric at Cambridge, and honed her stand-up skills in New York City's open mics and comedy clubs before returning to Australia as a comedian. You've likely heard Fraser's voice before if you're a fan of The Bugle . She also hosts a weekly spin-off podcast, The Gargle — an...

The creator and star of HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show," Robin Thede and her crew already have enjoyed 13 Emmy nominations and one Emmy win heading into the 2022 awards ceremony, as well as 2020 honors from the TV Critics Association for outstanding sketch/variety series. Thede grew up in Iowa, studied broadcast media at Northwestern and made a brief stop at The Second City before going Hollywood...

Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher grew up near each other in Atlanta but only became a sketch comedy duo while attending NYU together. As BriTANicK, they've made viral videos for YouTube, Cracked, CollegeHumor and Funny or Die, catapulting them onto Variety's 10 Comics to Watch list in 2013. They've acted together How I Met Your Mother , Much Ado About Nothing , and the indie comedy film Balls Out;...